The Baltic tellin (Limecola balthica, but until quite recently known as Macoma balthica) is a small bivalve found between the tidelines of sandy and muddy shores, and especially estuaries across northern Europe. It is an infaunal species, meaning that the living animal is found buried within the top few centimetres of the sediment, however empty shells are a common find. The beach at Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset is typically strewn with them once you get below the strandline.

Baltic tellin shells on the beach at Burnham-on-Sea

Their shells come in a range of colours, with white, yellow, orange and red forms found. Blue and purple shells may be stained by sulphides within the sediment. Typically, when mollusc shells show colour variation within a species, it may be due to visual predation, often from birds. The infaunal life habit of the Baltic tellin would seem to suggest that this is not the case however, and the different colour forms seems to coexist in the same locale.

I have found Baltic tellins (sadly without their pigmentation) in archaeological levels at the Walpole site in Somerset, and just recently noticed their shells within the mortar of the medieval gatehouse of Cleeve Abbey, suggesting a local muddy shore, perhaps the mouth of the Washford River, was used as the source for the sandy component of the mortar.

Baltic tellin shells in the mortar of the gatehouse at Cleeve Abbey

]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/baltic-tellins/feed/0matthewlawIMG_5093Baltic tellin shells on the beach at Burnham-on-SeaBaltic tellin shells in the mortar of the gatehouse at Cleeve AbbeyAutumn and the beginning of a yearhttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/autumn-and-the-beginning-of-a-year/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/autumn-and-the-beginning-of-a-year/#respondSun, 19 Nov 2017 10:29:14 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=731

Lichen and long shadows near Newton St Loe, November 2017

Aside from a five year break about a decade ago and an earlier period I can’t remember, I’ve spent all of my life in some way bound to the cycle of the academic year, in which renewal comes in autumn. This affects how I map out time in my mind. February 2018 is “this year” to me; September 2018 is not. This odd desynchronising of a mental calendar from the actual calendar is not unique to the education system however, and resonates with a more ancient and necessary organisation of time – the farming year.

“Farming” for me consists of a few pots on an inner city balcony – my autumn tasks were to plant garlic cloves, sow some early vegetables and clear a seemingly endless blizzard of plane tree (Platanus sp.) leaves to deny shelter to troublesome invertebrates. For a traditional farmer though, autumn is also the season of renewal. For arable farmers, the harvest will be ending (save for crops like sugar beet that are harvested into December), and preparations beginning for that of next year. The land will be manured and tilled and winter wheat, barley and oats may be sown. For livestock farmers in wet areas, cattle may be moved onto winter fodder. Sheep will be mated for spring lambs.

For farmers, and perhaps especially farmers in pre-mechanised societies of the past, difficult decisions need to be made in autumn. Sowing crops in autumn is a gamble. If it pays off it allows a staggered harvest, and light frosts may induce more productivity in crops. Heavy frosts, however, can destroy the crop. As Peter Reynolds noted in his excellent Shire Archaeology book Ancient Farming (1987), fields selected for autumn-sown crops are likely to be those away from high plateaus and valley bottoms to avoid the most severe frosts.

Livestock farmers would have had to turn their attention to culling the herd or flock. Non-breeding stock – young males and old females – are a drain on winter resources. The cull would necessitate a flurry of activity butchering, and salting or smoking meat. Grazing would be eked out as long as possible to conserve winter fodder – if this was mismanaged, further culls would likely follow. For a farming society, autumn is logically a season of renewal, the end of one year’s work and the beginning of another.

]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/autumn-and-the-beginning-of-a-year/feed/0matthewlawIMG_3711Interview: 2 years of Open Quaternaryhttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/interview-2-years-of-open-quaternary/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/interview-2-years-of-open-quaternary/#respondTue, 25 Jul 2017 06:52:42 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=700Our open access journal Open Quaternary is now two years old (see So we started a journal…). To mark this anniversary, our publishers Ubiquity Press interviewed Suzanne Pilaar Birch and I, which you can read here: https://blog.ubiquitypress.com/open-quaternary-two-years-on-and-going-strong-dd8427cc680
]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/interview-2-years-of-open-quaternary/feed/0matthewlawExperimenting with social videohttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/experimenting-with-social-video/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/experimenting-with-social-video/#respondMon, 05 Jun 2017 08:40:29 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=691I really enjoy spending some time at the weekend exploring different aspects of current affairs around the world through the short videos posted by AJ+. Obviously, these kind of social videos have great potential for education, and I think I’d like to try incorporating them into my Sustainability module at Bath Spa next year. To get used to working on them though, I made an attempt this weekend using a site I studied as part of my PhD research, Ceardach Ruadh on Baile Sear in the Western Isles of Scotland.

I hope you like it!

]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/experimenting-with-social-video/feed/0matthewlawBy-the-wind sailors, beached by the windhttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/by-the-wind-sailors-beached-by-the-wind/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/by-the-wind-sailors-beached-by-the-wind/#respondSat, 29 Apr 2017 11:38:44 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=658Back in March, we walked along the beach at Woolacombe, Devon, the morning after a stormy night. The night before had been spent in Ilfracombe, watching tall spray crashing against the sea wall, our senses woken with the energy that only a storm beating can impart.

Woolacombe was still and sunny the next day though, with fog hanging over the hills above, lending an island quality to the town. On the beach, by the rocks, I photographed colonies of mussels, dense mauve blooms erupting from the folds of the grey rocks. The strand line of the beach held a rarer sight though, scores of by-the-wind sailors, Velella velella, driven ashore by the previous night’s storm, and oozing a deep blue into the sand.

Velella are free-floating hydrozoans, related to jellyfish and sea anemones, and are in fact a colony rather than an individual animal. In life they float on the surface of the sea, where a small rigid fin or sail catches the wind (hence the English name, by-the-wind sailor). Mass strandings are relatively common after strong winds on south western coasts in the UK, and also along the west coast of North America. The ‘sail’ is made of chitin, the same stuff as insect skeletons, and the beached colonies very quickly dry out and lose their colour.

Velella velella stranded on Woolacombe beach, March 2017

]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/by-the-wind-sailors-beached-by-the-wind/feed/0matthewlawIs there less to play with, or am I less playful?https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/is-there-less-to-play-with-or-am-i-less-playful/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/04/28/is-there-less-to-play-with-or-am-i-less-playful/#respondFri, 28 Apr 2017 09:27:30 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=615Colleen Morgan’s keynote (the thread on Twitter ends here) for Lorna Richardson’s Public Archaeology Twitter Conference (#PATC on Twitter) has me wondering about my own digital archaeology practice. Colleen was writing about archaeologists on Twitter, and I’ll freely admit that my own Twitter presence is a mess of sincere public engagement, performance-as-the-enthusiastic-archaeologist, use and abuse of a hotline to experts, and more personal comments and retweets. Were it intended as a structured exercise in public archaeology (it isn’t), it would be a shambles.

I’m wondering more widely about how I use digital platforms for archaeological engagement. When I started this blog in 2008, I would take time to play with new platforms as they emerged – my first post, now with broken image, was advertising a (now defunct) social network on Ning; my second post involved a quick playabout with (now defunct) location based social media platform Unype. The next month (I posted often back then!) I looked at Photozoom (now defunct – is there a pattern here?). I was far from alone in this playfulness, and others were doing it in far more sophisticated ways. Colleen (and others) worked in SecondLife, Stu Eve and Andy Dufton inserted archaeological details into Four Square to give just two examples.

I’m certainly not this playful anymore. Partly, I think it’s because I’m a little more reserved about investing time and effort in new platforms. As seen above, new platforms may never take off. Even established and popular platforms are vulnerable to changing corporate priorities (Colleen and I have previously written about the fate of archaeology sites on Geocities). Partly, it’s because I have less free time than I did nine years ago. I’ve settled into Twitter + (rarely) blog for my digital outputs. My attempts at using Snapchat to support climate-related teaching and research have not taken off (it’s BSUClimate if you like a zen-like clutter-free silence on your Snapchat feed). But I’d be interested to hear how people are engaging with emerging platforms now. Any good examples?

Part of his broader linguistic research involved looking at the way masculinity is constructed in Men’s Health magazine (see this paper for examples – in short it seems men should be extremely muscular, drink beer, eat beef and have amazing sex). As an archaeologist, I was intrigued by the slide he showed of Men’s Health stories which draw on historical topics, and felt like breaking my blog silence to share (this is pictured, badly, above). These included

‘Boost endurance like an Aztec warrior’
‘Build bulk like a Roman gladiator’
‘Stay fit like a Viking raider’
‘Build stamina like a Mongol marauder’

I’d be intrigued to know what textual or archaeological evidence lies behind these pieces.

]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/history-as-seen-in-mens-health-magazine/feed/0matthewlawArran Stibbe at Bath SpaFrom 100 Minories blog – cesspit remainshttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/from-100-minories-blog-cesspit-remains/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/from-100-minories-blog-cesspit-remains/#respondTue, 17 May 2016 07:02:03 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=609My first contribution to the 100 Minories blog is now live, in which I discuss seeds, bones, shells and parasite eggs from cesspits at the site.
]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/from-100-minories-blog-cesspit-remains/feed/0matthewlawWinkles, Loneliness and Treats in Nineteenth Century Londonhttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/winkles-loneliness-and-treats-in-nineteenth-century-london/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/winkles-loneliness-and-treats-in-nineteenth-century-london/#respondSat, 06 Feb 2016 11:44:50 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=600

A common periwinkle (Littorina littorea) shell

I’ve been analyzing a series of samples from a large post-medieval soakaway/ cesspit feature associated with a house on the margin of the City of London. It’s chock full of china, clay tobacco pipes (one rather fancy stem ended in a bird claw cupping the bowl), animal bones, and my favourite find, a copper alloy (brass?) spinning top, now radiant green but I gave it a twirl (or several) and can tell you it is no less effective for its decay.

One sample contained a large number of fig seeds, with cherry stones and seeds of blackberries and grapes – evidently what we can euphemistically term nightsoil. I made up some slides from a small subsample of the pit fill for higher power microscopy and sure enough found eggs of parasitic whipworms and fish tapeworms, the latter a hazard of eating undercooked freshwater fish.

The most visibly numerous biological remains are periwinkle (Littorina littorea) shells, however. These became a common foodstuff in the 19th century, especially after the growth of the railways – the line to Canterbury and Whistable in Kent was even known as the Crab and Winkle Line. In the astounding London Labour and the London Poor (1851, but originally issued as a serial in the Morning Chronicle in the 1840s), Henry Mayhew details the work of winkle sellers, interviewing a number of them, who tell him that winkles are generally a “relish”, that they are particularly popular among servant girls and tradesman’s families, and that “it’s reckoned a nice present from a young man to his sweetheart, is winks”. Mayhew also notes that large quantities are sold in public houses and suburban tea gardens.

One seller made the rather touching observation was that because removing winkles from their shells is such a time-consuming affair:

“Old people, I think, that lives by themselves, and has perhaps an annuity or the like of that, and nothing to do pertickler, loves winks, for they likes a pleasant way of making time long over a meal. They’re the people as reads a newspaper, when it’s a week old, all through.”

Reading Mayhew’s detailed account invests the shells with an additional quality. Yes, they are discarded kitchen scraps, but at one point they were a treat, received with from the seller with anticipation and consumed with pleasure, more so than an everyday meal. We can extrapolate this point, and other considerations about shellfish, backwards in time: there is a history of fashion, of cultural connections, of changing technologies, of “relishes”, and of necessity; but also of local and even individual preferences, to be told from the deep history of shellfish consumption.

]]>https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/winkles-loneliness-and-treats-in-nineteenth-century-london/feed/0matthewlawwinkle.JPGIn empty buildingshttps://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/in-empty-buildings/
https://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/in-empty-buildings/#respondMon, 28 Dec 2015 16:51:31 +0000http://matthewlaw.wordpress.com/?p=586Guns were trained on me: I gasped as I quickly surveyed the seemingly innumerable brace of barrels. Instinctively, instantly, I turned and fled, head down, sprinting with all of my (limited) strength. Shouts, not shots, rang out as I barged through the double doors ahead of me, they were following, not firing. I looked up. A corridor stretched out ahead of me, light cast down from a broken skylight. I ran ahead, flying through fire doors, almost slipping on the dark pool of blood spread out from a lifeless body half-in, half-out, a small room on the left hand side. There was a telephone cast on the ground beside her. I didn’t know where I was, but it felt familiar, the house of an anonymous institution, now abandoned, predictable in its layout. I could hide here.

Where the eye leads, the body follows…

I seem to be haunted by nightmares at the moment, all of them disappointingly simplistic in plot and detail when I recall them, but truly terrifying in my sleep. This morning I woke from another, confused as to why I was being hunted, but filled with a different kind of uneasiness, one which has confronted me many times in my waking life as an archaeologist. There is an unnerving uncanniness to walking into a recently abandoned building. Over the years I have put trenches through the basements and car parks of all kinds of office blocks, homes and institutions, and I always find it slightly unsettling. Everything in them accords with my lived experience, and I picture the building brightly lit, populated with people typing, chattering and making coffee. Reality doesn’t cater to my imaginings, however, and some part of my denied mind senses that something must be wrong.

Alluringly unnerving.

Despite my uneasiness, I enjoy exploring these buildings. There was an old children’s hospital (it had a padded cell! I didn’t know they were still used!) and any number of vast multi-storey office blocks with basement tunnels stretching beneath them, where silver pipes lead to dark and complex plant rooms. Sometimes the offices are freshly empty, the windows boarded up, upturned mugs still sitting hopefully in dishwasher racks. More often, the building has been bereft of its corporate occupants for some time. Windows are broken and wiring has been ripped out. The artefacts of a more ephemeral human use are visible: needles and spoons, polystyrene food boxes and underwear. Their moment is fleeting – no trace that these buildings were ever anybody’s home will survive for future archaeologists, but human lives have been lived there – a shadow story to the recognisable building history.

I think Schiffer calls this ‘primary deposition’

The least comfortable I felt was on a site in rural Somerset. We had been given use of an empty bungalow for indoor space to take lunch and complete paperwork while we excavated in the garden. The last occupant had passed away but little had been done to draw a close to the material aspects of his life. The house was almost intact, save that the heating, electricity and water were off, save that a window was broken and a sparrow flitted noisily between the rooms. There was an object that looked like it might be a beer can wrapped as a Christmas gift on the kitchen counter. It was hard not to be touched by sadness.

As archaeologists, we find ourselves in places that have been abandoned by their people everywhere we work. Occasionally we find glimpses of individuals – unknowable to us but recognisable in their intentions – a potter’s thumb mark, the debitage of skillfully crafted arrowhead, a seemingly makeshift repair in a waterlogged wooden structure – which resonate with our experiences and connect us despite the centuries. Rarely, however, do we have either as well-preserved a record, or as familiar a built environment, as in these unintended archaeological site explorations. But perhaps one day I’ll develop the imagination to dream of being chased into a roundhouse and feel that it is familiar.